Posts Tagged With: Christ

Good Morning WOTC! Well it is almost lunch time, so what’s for lunch? Something good, I am on my way. I wanted to apologize for no daily posts today. We started out with the intentions of doing them as usual. But good intentions occasionally go down the toilet, as ours did today.

I always listen to the News every morning as everyone knows. Our local forecast calls for some severe storms forming right over the top of us today. Said some of the storms could contain tornadoes. We also live in tornado alley, so please keep us in your prayers today. Since listening to the weather, I decided I would get up early and go get some of my prescriptions. I called them in. About fifteen minutes later, the pharmacy was calling me back. Problem with the insurance. I straightened that out which took about 15 minutes. Still had time to run to town. Got ready, went outside to start the truck and let it warm up. While the truck was warming up, dumbass me decides to pick up some garbage the wind had blew over here. I made the fatal mistake of stepping in the wrong spot. Before I knew it, my left leg had sunk down to my knee in mud. I could not pull my leg out to save me. The bad thing was it was still sinking and by that time I was screaming. Thank goodness, my neighbor heard me and came running. I grabbed a hold of the foundation to stop sinking. My neighbor carefully weaved his way through the mud. He finally got to me and he started sinking too. The next thing I knew he had grabbed a hold of me and ripped me out of the mud and over his head. I landed on the walkway and he grabbed my hand a I helped him out. He wanted to know what the hell I was doing in the mud. I told him I didn’t know it was mud till I stepped there. I guess I could have really been an ungrateful ass hole and told him, “I was picking up your garbage.” But I didn’t. He saved me from quick mud (get it, instead of quicksand, we have quick mud, not funny, it stinks worse than a skunk!).

It was amazing though, I didn’t change clothes or nothing. I just sit down on the steps and wiped my shoe and sock off. My pants did not get a lick of mud on them. As I was going down, my pants leg was pushed up by the ground. My leg was muddy but with the pants leg down, you couldn’t tell anything had happened. Weird, I know. So now I am wiped off and getting in the truck. Well guess what’s sunk next? Yes, you guessed it, the truck. By this time, I am going, “Goddess what have I done today?” The truck was marred up to the middle bolt on both back tires. I gentle eased up enough to get some traction. Then I put the truck in four-wheel drive and put her in reverse, off we went. Needless to say, it looks like I have been mudding in my yard. Oh, what fun! NOT!

After all that adventure at the house, Kiki and I were off. I should mention she hates it when I put the truck in four-wheel drive. Why I don’t know, she just does. So she finally calmed down from that. But before she did, she was sitting in my lap fogging up the window. I would wipe and she would fog it up again. I finally said the heck with it and rolled the window down a little were I could see. We made it to town and got everything done we had to do. The funny thing, it sprinkled all the way to town and back. Now it is not doing a darn thing. That figures doesn’t.

I forgot something totally hilarious. I think everyone knows we are located about 5 miles from an uranium enrichment plant. They are in the process of closing it down. Eventually it will be totally empty. We found out the other day, they aren’t leaving any guards there at all. That is just peachy! No telling what kind of crap will be left there. Anyway, in the mail today, we got a letter from USEC that is the plant I am talking about. I had to do a double take on that one. I opened it and I know I shouldn’t have, but I just started laughing my ass off. I guess it was just the topper on the kind of morning I had had. I scanned over the letter real quick. It informed us of no security for the plant but rest assured the security system will still be operational. OK! Now on the next piece of paper was what to do if the sirens go off. That’s it we are all going to die. They have sirens all over the place. But if the place blows, we won’t be able to take a step. We will be dead. The kill radius on this plant is huge. We first moved out here, my son and I would go fishing at the game reserve which is on part of the plant property. We didn’t eat anything we caught, rumor had it they all glowed in the dark, lol! Anyway, my son saw one of those signs and asked me, “what should we do if they sounded?” I have always been honest with my children. I told him, “kiss your ass good-bye.” I know we could move but we would have near as much fun as we are now.

Well back to the site, Mystie is going to be posting some spells later on (if we don’t get blowed away). I am going to check out some stuff Word Press has give us. They gave us thousands of plug-ins to use on this site. They did that Monday and I saved the link but haven’t had time to check out what we now have access too. I do know one is a radio player and there is also a news ticker that runs all the time. Might be some pretty cool stuff who knows? I am also going to do some Pinning on Pinterest. Pinterest has a widget that you can put on your web site. It lets your friends see what you are pinning. But we can’t use it, it is javascript. Word Press won’t let you use Java because they say it is so each to be hacked. I was sort of disappointed because it was a cool widget. Oh, well, life goes on……

I guess I need to start updating ya’ll every day. That way I would talk your ears off. Who am I kidding, I still would, lol! I was very serious about you keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. Before anything was built on this property a tornado came right straight through here. The people around here told us if we had been here we would have probably been killed. It tore this area up pretty good. And all the bad weather we have had around here recently it does make me nervous. So please, not only keep us in your prayers but our area also. We have all seen enough disaster and destruction, we don’t need any more.

Well now you are officially caught up, Mystie will here later on. I am checking out our new toys from Word Press and then doing a little Pinning. I don’t know if I told you I keep the Pinning going because we get new members from there. It is an excellent source of advertisement for us. Now I am going to hush and get busy. I hope everyone has a very blessed and happy Thursday. We will see you tomorrow. Till then…….

Touching the earth is a lovely thing, a feeling of once again finding our beginnings, a knowing that this place where we stand, whether to walk or plow or plant, is something created for us, for the pulse of the earth slows our own and tranquilizes our confusion. The Cherokees believe that seeing the sky in all its limitless depths stirs our imaginations and stretches our awareness of how much simple beauty is provided for us. We can see that bitterness lasts only as long as we allow it, but we have reached beyond the ceiling of our minds and are as unlimited as the sky. As currents of air stir the fragrance of flowers, we may not be able to see all things but we sense the influence and know that life is ours to enjoy. It comes by Divine heritage.

Maybe you are using a desire you can’t fulfill to distract you from truly engaging the blessings you already have.

When it comes to the things we want, there always seems to be an endless list. No matter how many times we get something off that list, we add new things to replace it. In life, this drama of wanting and getting and wanting is all part of the dance. The things we want motivate us to get up and get them.

And yet, at the same time, we can torment ourselves with our wanting, especially when we want something we can’t have or can’t find. It is in cases like these that it might be fruitful to entertain the idea that maybe what you really want is right in front of you. Maybe you are using this desire you can’t fulfill to distract you from truly engaging the blessings you already have. It may seem like that doesn’t make sense, yet we do it all the time. It may be easier to see in other people than to see it in ourselves. We have all heard our friends wishing they were more this or less that, and looking at them we see clearly that they are everything they are wishing they were. We know people who have wonderful partners and yet envy you yours. We wish we could give these people a look at their situations from our perspective so that they could see that what they want really is right in front of them.

It’s not too far-fetched to consider that we might be victims of the same folly. It can be scary to have what we want. We get caught up in the chase and forget to enjoy the beauty right in front of us—like a child who never wants the toy she has in her hand but always the one just out of her reach. Take a moment today to consider the many things you are holding in the palm of your hand and how you might best play with them.

She’s been waiting
She’s been waiting, waiting.
She’s been waiting so long.
She’s been waiting for her children
To remember, to return.Blessed be, and blessed are,
The lovers of the lady.
Blessed be, and blessed are,
The mother, maiden, crone.
Blessed be, and blessed are,
The ones who dance together.
Blessed be, and blessed are,
The ones who dance alone.
She’s been waiting, waiting.
She’s been waiting so long.
She’s been waiting for her children
To remember, to return.Blessed be, and blessed are,
The ones who work in silence.
Blessed be, and blessed are,
The ones who shout and scream.
Blessed be, and blessed are,
The movers and the changes.
Blessed be, and blessed are,
The dreamers and the dream.
She’s been waiting, waiting.
She’s been waiting so long.
She’s been waiting for her childrenTo remember, to return.

“GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE!”

Wake up, little sleepy heads!

Guess who is knocking on your screen this morning? Little old me, of course. If you remember yesterday we had to cut our daily edition short. Brother, was it a mess. I contacted WordPress and told them what was going on. Since I had several people tell me that the site was down yesterday. I am hoping the problem has been fixed. We are getting ready to see because I am starting the Saturday edition, right now…………

In their role as walkers between the worlds, Witches and Heathens are creatures born from apparent paradox. While the individual practitioner may emphasize one or the other, most Neopagans simultaneously honor both the multiplicity and the fundamental unity of All That Is. Meaning no disrespect to the true polytheists among us, I myself find deepest inspiration when I acknowledge one immanent Holy One who wears many masks.

As human beings, though, we’re decidedly prone to losing sight of the forest for the trees, and thus I find beneficial the practice of returning to our most basic beliefs from time to time. My purpose in writing this essay isn’t to resolve all the apparent dualities in our world, or any such herculean task. Rather, I want to focus upon one particular duality that profoundly shapes the quest shared by mystics and magicians, the observed gap between the realms of matter and of spirit, and the ways by which that divide shapes our sense of life, death, and rebirth.

Employing the term in the contemporary, non-Siberian sense, contemporary Witchcraft is a shamanic path. While many Witches and Heathens prefer to conceptualize and discuss magic via the language of energies and vibrations, at some point within our developing quest we encounter some non-physical entity that’s sentient in roughly the same sense that we are sentient. Whether we meet them during our astral journeys or perceive their physical manifestations upon our own material realm, they are undeniably real, possessing strangely familiar feelings and motivations.

Speaking from my own admittedly limited experience, some spiritual beings are beneficent, while some leave morality to be desired. Most are somewhere in the middle, neither angels nor demons. In fact, for all their whimsicality, the average spirit seems very, very human. They have needs and desires, dreams and fears, just like you and me.

This class of being, which impresses itself primarily upon our intuitive sense yet with occasional physical manifestations, I define as spiritual, as opposed to material creatures like ourselves who, generally speaking, prove more intensely cognizant of the physical. Of course, there exists no creature exclusively material or spiritual. Every material creature maintains an aspect within the spiritual realms, and every spiritual being produces some resonance upon the material plane. With precious few exceptions, however, most entities favor one aspect over the other, and only when the Mists between worlds serendipitously grow thin do we even acknowledge the multifaceted nature of our cosmos.

As walkers between the worlds, Witches and Heathens learn how to step lightly from the material into the spiritual and back again. Every Circle that we conjure creates a sanctuary where the material and the spiritual may intertwine. Every spell that we cast draws the two worlds closer together. Viewed from this perspective, magic becomes the awareness of how these two realms – material and spiritual – interact with one another.

Whenever we exercise our awareness of the spiritual, however, we encounter the possibility that we will misinterpret or overvalue the experience. Just looking around, it’s not difficult to conclude that creatures within the material realm are deeply flawed, vulnerable to entropy wearing the twin guises of decay and suffering. Faced with our own decline and eventual demise, we often cast about for something beyond our finite existence, something eternal and incorruptible. We reflect upon the turbulent swirl that is our life, turning towards religion or philosophy for solace.

So when the novice Witch first encounters the spirit world, they often harbor a predisposition to believe that here rests the incorruptible something they’ve been seeking. After all, the spirit realm’s inhabitants don’t appear to be bound by the same fixed life cycles that define our physical existence. Moreover, I suspect our culture’s mythos concerning ghosts and the restless dead fuels a prejudice that says our need for something beyond the grave can be filled by the spirit world.

In my humble opinion, I believe that seeking out eternal life within the spirit world is misguided, although there are certainly worse ways by which one can err. (I’m fully aware the above statement will contradict the beliefs held by many readers, and where that happens, please understand that I don’t consider myself any sort of authority on Truth. I draw upon my experiences and my reflections to generate my unique magical paradigm. Your experiences, your reflections, and your paradigm doubtless will differ from my own, and that’s a Good Thing!)

My intention isn’t to question whether we are eternal, because I believe we are. Nor do I question the existence of the Summer Lands, that blessed abode wherein the ghost recuperates and regroups before returning to the ever-turning wheel. The Summer Lands figure within my own paradigm. Still, I question the nature of the Summer Lands, and especially their connection to realms defined as spiritual or astral.

My interest concerning the Summer Lands took on fresh significance with two recent events. The first episode occurred while I was visiting my astral sanctum around Mothers’ Day. One of the spirits who accompanied me had observed the thoughtforms that people generated as the holiday approached, and asked me whether he himself had a mother. (Spirits, like kids, say the darnedest things.) I was surprised by the question, and since then I’ve delved into path working in hopes of discovering the answer to his question. (It’s material for another essay, yet for those who wonder, I believe the answer is yes.)

The second episode occurred during an otherwise unremarkable walk around my neighborhood a couple months ago. During that walk two spirits that share my home accompanied me. The ground was still drying out from rain the previous night, and we happened upon a dead frog. Not an unusual sight where I live; there are several lakes and rivers here, and when the clouds bring rain the frogs wander up into the streets, where they’re struck by passing motorists.

The “younger” spirit could sense where the frog had been killed, and I could feel her became alarmed that the same fate could befall her. Instinctively, I reached out with what comforting energies I could, communicating the sense of safety, yet after the encounter I found myself wondering: Are spirits in some sense mortal?

To borrow from the Venerable Bede, our own finite lifespan can be compared with the sparrow, which flies from the winter storm into the king’s fire-lit hall, before returning to the storm. That is, we are conscious about our own personal history for one short span, with the vast expanse of the unknown looming large upon either side. The metaphor aptly describes our condition as material beings, yet here I was confronted with two spiritual creatures that professed ignorance regarding the darkness before and after their own existence.

Based on these encounters, I believe spirits also wonder where they originate, and what lies beyond their apparent end. Ergo, spirits don’t possess the solution for the riddle of our own mortality, because they themselves are bound by the same entropic forces.

If the spiritual realms are not immortal, then either the Summer Lands are equally liable to destruction, or else the Summer Lands somehow transcend both the material and the spiritual planes. Because I believe our cosmos, and all things that inhabit this great web of existence, are intrinsically eternal, I must take up the latter argument, that the Summer Lands are neither material nor spiritual in nature, but rather transcend both categories of existence.

To develop an accurate cosmology, which properly honors the Summer Lands, we must first inquire about the planes where finite existence, both material and spiritual, plays itself out. The pantheistic philosopher Benedict Spinoza proposed that all things in existence are but modes that have their being within a unitary, self-caused Substance, simultaneously identified with God and with the cosmos. According to Spinoza’s ontology, this Substance remains unknowable except by its attributes, two of which fall within human detection: extension and thought.

In broad strokes, these two attributes are equivalent to what I term the material and the spiritual, and like Spinoza, I regard these realms as facets of one single, otherwise unknowable (upper-case) Truth.

Eternal life may be found, not among the spiritual realm, but rather within the deeper reality towards which both the material and the spiritual point; therein we learn the true import of our astral journeys. Spirits appear human precisely because they are driven by the same mortality that defines our existence. Certain spirits are heirs to ancient wisdom, but then, some material beings teach crucial truths, as well.

Rather than seeking a spirit world with all the answers, we must prepare ourselves to encounter beings with the same hopes and fears, and we must engage those creatures with the same empathy and compassion, which we would expect.

With the sharing of mutual respect, we acquire insight into the (upper-case) Truth wherein we may discover the Summer Lands and our own incorruptible nature. While spiritual beings don’t enjoy the complete picture, they do view the puzzle from angles that we seldom adopt.

Conversely, as material creatures we grasp certain aspects of reality more readily than most spirits can. Just like the proverbial blind people who grasp different parts of the elephant, we each hold crucial parts belonging to the most sublime puzzle. Only by building bridges of mutual cooperation with our astral cousins can we hope to remember our shared immortality.

Your Ancient Symbol Card for Today

Evil

At its extreme Evil indicates a life force that embodies pure malevolence. Fortunately Evil in the extreme is very rare. Generally Evil suggests actions taken that challenge our morality and without regard to the harm that may be done to others. The appearance of Evil signifies a time in which someone is acting out of rage, selfishness, ignorance, or, sadly, sating a mean spirit.

As a daily card Evil is a warning that you or your group are the focus of someone’s malice. This is time for you to be very wary of the motives of those who haven’t earned your trust. It is likely you have something they want and they are willing to go to extremes to take it from you